Heroin Chic
by QuinnLark
Summary: - The Badass Chic Series - I'm a decision-making machine: some stupid and some magical. Leaving the 1990s and Eddie Cullen behind falls in the stupid category. I did what I thought I had to do, but somehow I'm never quite ahead of the curve. Nothing is ever as it seems. Grunge life in Louboutins. Read with caution.
1. Heroin Chic

Heroin Chic

a QuinnLark fanfiction

You won't find me listening to Blink 182. Those preppy punk-wannabes can stick their lacrosse sticks up their asses and call it a day for all the shits I give.

There's no way in fuck I'll subject my very special ears to walking, talking Barbie dolls with computer-corrected voices like Britney Spears and Christina. Fuck-to-the-no.

And those boy bands?! Why don't we all just step back and admit their synchronized dancing is the result of one too many ballet lessons followed by rubbing up on each other in the shower while swearing their heterosexuality by dating the above listed Barbies; Their bleach-tipped hairs have definitely soaked into whatever brains they've got.

Give me Oasis or the Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana or the Pixies any day. But stop fucking torturing me at these goddamn college parties with the bullshit these teenagers think is music.

Yes, I'm bitter. As I should be. Fucking hell.

XxxxxxxxxxX

A/N: something new. Music. All the way.


	2. Missus Chic

Missus Chic.

Growing up is hard to do. I no longer smell teen spirit or the leather seats of an old tour van; in fact, the only things I now smell are breakfasts of fruit parfait a with raw honey, the scent of my husband's Calvin Klein cologne when he douses himself each morning, and the only leather in my life exists in the form of heels, handbags, and my office chair.

I'm owner of a dream; CEO of a company ... in my imagination, at least. Maybe it will be a reality someday. Eighths and Bass Lyrics - the brain child of my grunge-self, and a way to keep a Jimmy Choo'd foot in the world in which I was forced to conform, and a combat booted foot in the one I wish to remain. Someday, I tell myself. Someday.

I'm living a proper, American, post-9/11 life. My hair is bobbed, highlighted and straight, and a the Stars and Stripes fly proudly in front of our four bedroom, three bath ranch built in 1954. Jacob, an investment banker, and I have the predetermined life of the average American couple: a dog, Roofus, a garden of roses and lilacs, a pool, a trampoline, a landline and two mobile phones, and 2.5 kids. For real. There's a bun in this oven. I just found out. I can't say I'm thrilled.

Only a handful of people know the truth - my biggest secret. Jake is one of those people, and I know he resents me just a little for it, but he'd never let Reny catch the bitter eyes he forgets to hide from me.

My oldest daughter, an eight-year-old beauty with fiery hair, is not his child. She's the product of my old life - drugs and alcohol and rock-n-roll; Seattle, when I was a groupie, and Eddie Cullen was the shit.

He came in my mouth, on my tits, in my ass, and everywhere he wanted, because as long as I had him on me, he was mine. What we lacked in romance, we made up for in fun. I was his go-to girl. I didn't ask for exclusivity, but he gave it. He fell in love with me before I had a chance to grow up. To a nineteen-year-old, love and lust and two different things. To Eddie, a twenty-one-year old drummer and Stanford drop-out, the two were mutually exclusive.

My last night with him in Seattle, a night of coke and whiskey and fucking, created my beautiful girl. And he had no idea. I took off first thing the next morning, heading straight to my future at NYU.

I don't think he'll ever know.

A/N:

Enjoy the ride!


	3. SoccerMom Chic

SoccerMom Chic

I told Jake about the baby. He's hoping for a boy, because two girls is too much, according to him. His home is a hive of estrogen. His reprieve, at least, is his fancy-schmancy office on Wall Street with the other rich guys making themselves more millions and their billionaire clients more billions.

I'll never complain about the bank account - the life I have is cushy as the old shag carpet in my high school bedroom back at Dad's place in Forks. I won't complain, I swear ... except to say everything is joint and I've no money my own two hands have made. Whenever I've mentioned - not complained, mind you - this to Jake, he recommends I volunteer extra hours with the Parent/Teacher Association at the girls' über-snobbish private school. Yeah. Because that will make me some of my own money ... Please note my sarcasm.

Believe me, I don't mind spending Jake's money. I take holidays with my girlfriends in the Hamptons, hop over to Disneyland or Disney World with the girls, winter in the south of France, and plan an extravagant family vacation to the Bahamas annually. It's not the spending or the getting which bothers me; it's the fact that none of this is mine.

"It's ours," Jake tells me. Yeah, ours. But it sure as hell doesn't feel that way. Not when he's the one whose name is on the pay stub.

The girls keep my life busy, a preferable alternative to the idle, fat one I'd lead were they not as invested in extracurricular activities as they are.

Lexie is in soccer. She's as sporty and athletic as her daddy. She and Jake have a special bond I don't pretend to understand. They worship the ground the other walks on. He, even with his busy schedule, is at every single game our seven-year-old plays. He's her biggest fan.

Reny ... For as much as Lexie is Jake's mini-me, Reny is Eddie's daughter. Her musical inclination is superb. Each time I hear her sweet voice echoing from her music room and the tinkling of the piano keys as she plays, I can scarcely breathe around the lump of memories filling my throat with questions.

Maybe it would've worked out for Eddie and I if I hadn't been such a chickenshit. Maybe we were just too young.

There's another world in my mind, one I live in with him and Reny; it's filled with notes and trebles and bass and the most passionate kisses I can remember.

But they're only in my head.

I made my bed, and now I lie beside Jake in it.

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A/N: thank you, ladies, for the recs! You're rocking my world. ❤️


	4. YesterChic

YesterChic

His hands were all over my body that last night. He couldn't get enough of me, and I couldn't get enough of him. Every push and pant was heavy in the air as sweat dripped from his auburn hair to the pentagram tat on my left tit.

Oh god, there was nothing as good as Eddie.

He had a rhythm to his fucking better than any beat he played on the drums, and he could go on and on and on until I was begging for mercy and water and relief; not necessarily in that order. He was better than weed. It's relaxing where he lit a fire in my pants. He wasn't comparable to heroin either—though numbing through fucking was his thing. He was more like crack: addictive, got my heart racing.

Yes. He was the coke to my snort; the pipe dream I'd been waiting for.

And from the day I met him, to the ten months I spent at his side and on his leather bench-bed on that old Volkswagen tour van, there was not a thing on earth better than that boy. He was all mine.

I spent that year trying to forget Mom and Phil and the money they took away from me because I refused to go NYU like they wanted. I hadn't meant to let that time change my mind or my future. I went to stay with Dad after graduation - sort of a farewell to the summers spent with him - and ended up spending approximately five percent of my time with him and ninety-five percent with Edward Cullen and Perl Nexklas at their shows.

It wasn't Charlie's fault. He was a great dad, but once Angela took me to that first concert, I was a goner. It took me a few weeks to trade my Spice Girl sneakers for combat boots, and my spaghetti strap tanks for flannel, but I managed the transition.

Jake called. A lot. He'd always been more a perfect mate to our high school than to me, but the loss of football practice created a boredom in him he figured only I could fill. I was a great girlfriend to him all throughout our school years, but the sound of Eddie's sexy voice in that mic and in my ear later that first night sent the idea of being good at anything but doing him out of my head.

Dad said Jake came to see me once in those months, coming to ask - beg - me to come home with him and go to school like I was supposed to. Higher education and love and futures, Dad quoted. I wasn't in Forks that night, however. I was curled up with Eddie on the hood of his uncle's 1982 Corvette after being bent over it only moments earlier.

The exchange of Jake's over-pumped biceps for Eddie's lean, taut form and thick dick was more than worth the cost of missing my first year of college. But it wasn't only about the sex.

Not to Eddie.

He fucking loved me. He told me all the time. Over and over until my heart wanted to explode, but the words never left my lips until that final night. We made love for the first - and last - time in a proper hotel room, with proper sheets and pillows, on Eddie's dime ... and I left the next morning when reality smacked me in the face in the form of a phone call on his mobile. Charlie let me know that Jake's dad had been killed in a car accident.

I was suddenly weighing the guilt of my conscience to the love in my heart.

If anyone ever tells you love wins in the end, slap them in the face. They're a liar; guilt always wins.

XXXXXXXXX

A/N: loving writing this and loving the reviews. You rock my world.

xo

Q


	5. Throwing Up Music and My Heart and Shit

Throwing Up Music and My Heart and Shit

E.C.

I took for granted the solid ground she put me on when she was near. Her absence left a resounding echo in me. It shouldn't have been possible to fall in love that hard and fast - not at twenty-one. I was only a kid, and so was she. We didn't know anything about anything except how much our bodies ached for each other.

She was a force of nature, Bella; like a star about to explode into a supernova. No. She was a star collapsing into a black hole, and sucking me in so far I couldn't see daylight. She was all that existed.

I loved that girl. Hard. Hard and fast and brilliantly.

After she left, I tried to find her, tried to get ahold of her and find a way to bring her back into my life. There was no rhyme or reason for her departure, except a call from her dad's number on my phone which I discovered when I woke up and she was gone.

I called him back, hoping he would shed some light on the darkness eclipsing my soul, but the dude already hated me for taking his little girl away for all those months. He was less than helpful; even goaded me a little with the mention of a boyfriend. But I knew that was a lie. Bella was such a good girl when we met - a virgin I thoroughly enjoyed corrupting. She would've told me if there had been someone else in her life.

I think.

Like most things, it started out a little crazy for us. She looked like a model for Gap the first night we met at our concert in Port Angeles. She was leggy and perfect, and just the sight of her made my dick beg to come out and play. We danced and danced and I bought the kid all the beer she could drink that night.

Two days later the guys in the band gathered at the lake where Angela and Jess said they'd be. Bella was there, too, in a sexy as fuck polkadot bikini, floating on a giant yellow innertube. The creeper I am watched her for thirty solid minutes, seeing the sun soak into her creamy flesh and the freckles come out from hiding. I was so jealous of that cold water gliding over her ass and the sun kissing her body.

When I could take no more of the watching - or the hardon - I dove into the water, swam directly underneath her luscious ass cheeks and pulled her right through the middle of the tube. She was less than impressed, and even threw a few venomous curse words my way. They only made me want her more; they sounded like honey on her lips.

But I made it better. I built a little campfire of our own, shared burnt marshmallows and my dry flannel shirt with her. Bella begged for my fingers, but I didn't give in. Not yet. She told me she was a virgin and I was never the type of guy to fuck around without throwing my full heart into it.

I knew when I kissed her while a star shot across the night sky, I was in it for love. And she would be mine.

And then she wasn't.

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A/N: Another update today?! Say what?

Hope you enjoyed Eddie's POV. ❤️

Q


	6. When the World Crashed Down

When the World Crashed Down

I'm little numb to the chaos around me. Maybe it was years spent beating the shit out of drums, but the sound of gunfire and screaming and the radio reverberating with commands and positions of bogies feels like background noise to my life.

I'm in the middle of the fucking desert, shooting at a bunch of guys who are shooting right back at me. I'm jaded; disillusioned.

I was there when the buildings crumbled to rubble, looking for Bella because I'd at last had word from Angela that she was living in the city. I fucking prayed to God for the first time in my life, begging that she wouldn't be one of those three thousand murdered Americans. I stopped looking for just her though. Every able-bodied man was needed to sift through the tons of steel and concrete which had buried our fellow citizens alive.

Bella became an afterthought to the urgency of attack. Patriotic bones I never knew existed fused together and came to life inside of me.

I joined the Marine Corps October 1, 2001.

I got the Stars and Stripes tattooed in a sleeve down my arm, and the Corps insignia on my pec above my heart. I wasn't a jarhead by birth, but now a soldier baptized in the blood of my countrymen. I am a Devil Dog; a man reborn.

It was surprisingly easy to forget about music. The gray of grunge rock faded as red, white, and blue colored my irises.

It wasn't as easy to forget her. But I made do. Girls like a man in uniform, but they fucking come undone for a Marine. Un. Done.

Still, I searched for her. I kind of wish they had MySpace when she first left. It would've made it a hell of a lot easier to find that girl. When I finally did, though, I sort of wish I hadn't.

Bella was smiling at me from a picture on a computer screen, looking like the Gap girl she'd been before, with a yuppie dude beside her and a kid in her lap. She still took my breath away. And that's a fucking hard thing to do with the great shape I'm in. Looking at her made my hands tremble worse than the first time I picked up my rifle.

But she was gone. She wasn't mine anymore.

"Get down Cullen!" I hear in my radio. But it's too late. I hear my own flesh ripping as I take first a bullet to the shoulder and then another to the neck.

And I'm down for the count.

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A/N: it's Passover tonight, so I'll try to post one more before the crazy weekend. Thank you so much for the lovely reviews, and whoever the guest review was about my Drabble, THANK YOU! I love this writing style.

I'm thinking of competing in the new angst contest. EEEEK! ❤️


	7. Volunteer Chic

Volunteer Chic

So I compromised. Oh well, right? Jake wants the proper wife doing the proper things, so here I am. If I'm not allowed to make money with my own two hands, the least I can do is organize events for the less fortunate. Jake approved when I gave him the news.

Our son was born last year, a whopping nine pound boy with this dad's dark skin and dark eyes. Walker George. Yes, my husband named our son after President Bush - kinda. I think it's Jake's way of letting me know he wants to get into politics; this would also explain the way he's been pushing me toward volunteerism since even before Walker's birth.

He was right to do so. Despite the fact that we don't see eye-to-eye, my husband knows me well. While he was less than impressed when I came home from Washington with my roots grown out and a few tattoos, he told me he'd forgive me the changes. He wasn't quite as forgiving when I barfed all over his Mercedes the day I found out about Reny. Neither were Mom and Phil.

Jake swore he wouldn't tell anyone that the baby wasn't his, and he'd help me raise it, under the condition of a shotgun wedding within the week. He knew he wanted to marry me when we were ten, he told me. Funny, the feeling was never mutual.

I packed my bag the day before my supposed wedding and boarded a Greyhound, Seattle bound. But Mom was there to stop me. She made sure I knew I was nothing more than a mess of used toilet paper and I was lucky Jake wanted me at all.

Leaving that bus is my biggest regret.

Marrying Jake fades from regret to pride to neutrality, depending on the day or time or fight. He's a good dad for the kids, and I know he cares for me, though we've become more roommates or friends with benefits than anything. Hell, that's all we've ever been.

We don't let on to our inner thoughts and feelings though. There's enough to hide the raw bones of our brokenness in a fat covering of cash. When he makes me mad, I buy myself a handbag. When I piss him off, he buys a sailboat. Something like that; it's how our story goes.

The kids are protected from truth by being too busy to notice. Even Walker will be spared: his nanny starts today.

I open the door to an au pair from Finland, whom we've just hired as a live-in Nanny. Brigit is sweet and young, and great with kids - I visited Scandinavia with Alice last month to meet her and see how I felt about it. It worked out, obviously.

Walker takes to her immediately. I know no such thing as Mommy-guilt. I got over that when Reny was four.

Twenty minutes after Brigit arrives, I'm out the door and hopping into Alice's yellow Porche. She's another rich wife - we should really start our own club - married to the heir of an Texas oil company, tycoon and politician Jasper Hale. She and I met through our husbands, and now we're teaming up to do our civic duty (and help promote our husbands and their ambitions) by hosting a concert for the Wounded Warriors Project - a charity we've each dug deep into our pocket books to help support.

Another nice thing about having money in the bank? I've gotten to know some of those fuckawesome bands I loved a decade ago. Weezer is playing tonight. No, their nerd rock is not grunge, but it's the best I could do for this kick-off event.

The drive to Virginia rolls by with The Killers blasting and singing our hearts out. They're pretty good, even for my particular tastes.

Hours later, the venue is alive; men and women in uniform - those home on leave, those missing limbs, those permanently scarred from battle wounds, those about to head back - are rocking. Free at last.

Alice and I chat backstage after the concert, congratulating ourselves on the success and already setting plans in motions for the next, when a familiar voice steals my breath.

Everything about his body has changed - muscles, a shaved head, tattoos, a gnashing pink scar on his neck - but not his eyes. And they're the same Washington forest-green.

And they're staring right back at me.

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A/N: I love you. Thank you for pimping this story. More to come! ❤️


	8. When Goddesses Appear

When Goddesses Appear

E.C.

I don't know why I agreed to go to this concert tonight. It's not like I'm a huge Weezer fan or anything, but this is the first time in the five months I've been back stateside that I'm doing anything. Getting shot really does something to a person. I'm a lucky fuck that Emmett was there to press his fingers into my artery until the medic made it over. I could've bled out in that sandy hell hole really damn quick without him.

I'm pretty sure the fucker thinks I owe him one. Maybe I do. The guy took a bullet to the ass while he saved my sorry hide. He's the asshole forcing me to go to this Wounded Warrior thing tonight. Nothing like reminding someone they're an invalid, right? Let's host a fucking concert to make you poor, destroyed bastards feel better.

I'm a little jaded. Bullets in the neck will do that to a guy.

Some of us, the fucked up ones still in recovery, get to go backstage after the concert to meet the band. My chest swells with envy when I pass the drumset onstage. I gave up a lot to fight for this country. Look where it landed me.

And then suddenly, I'm the happiest fucking patriot on the planet; grateful to the gods for sending that lead my way because it landed me here in this moment: where she is.

Holy god, she looks as amazing as the day I told her I loved her. She's older - fuck, like twenty-nine now - but she's a million times better than any wet dream I've had about her in the past decade. Bella is dressed like a queen; owns the room and the floor and the world. Everything in me is fighting to stay on my feet.

"Dude, wanna get a picture with the band?" Emmett asks. I kind of hear him, but there's a goddess blinding me to anything else around us.

"No..." I trail off. I can't even form coherent words. "I have to do something."

Emmett snaps his fingers in front of my eyes, and when I don't blink follows my line of sight toward Bella's majesty.

"Oh fuck," he says. "Is that...?"

"Yeah." A single worded answer is all he needs, because he knows. I have a photo of the two of us in my helmet. "Bella."

Speaking her name conjures her attention. And those hazel-brown eyes meet mine under the hot stage lights.

A million scenarios play out in my mind; a trillion more words crash into a brick wall at the tip of my tongue. But I never expected my feet to about-face and send me one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction.

I'm such a chickenshit, but I don't want her to see the broken fuck I am.

"Eddie!" I'm out the backstage door when I hear an older, more mature version of the voice my memory recalls, calling out to me. "Edward Masen Cullen! Wait!"

A decade of waiting is crash-landing on me here and now.

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A/N:

So sorry I didn't post yesterday. The seder prep had me busy busy ... and wine. lol

I fucking love Edward's POV. It's so much fun to write.

Thank you for the reviews!

I'm gonna watch some Outlander and work on my angst contest entry. ;) And maybe another chapter or two for your Easter Sunday.

Guest Reviwer,

Hi. Please log in and message me and we can chat about CS, though I have a feeling I might already know who you are.

I know I don't owe you a bit of explanation, but I'll offer this:

I left the fandom when shit was coming out about plagiarism. I left when my publishing deal took over my world. I left because I am an author.

After leaving, I didn't think about this place. I needed the space I took, and the fresh air it offered.

I pulled CS, thought of the great bones of a story it is, thought of publishing, and then realized it wasn't itself anymore. I didn't look at it for a long time. Then I realized it was just sitting there, taking up space on my computer. I threw it in Dropbox and deleted all the files from my computer.

I didn't write for months. I had a terribly invasive surgery and went through a deep bout of depression at the time as all this shit happened. But it was *my* story to pull and my sabbatical to take.

I've missed this place; the comraderie and love that is shared. I missed some of you more than I realized. But what I didn't miss? The sense of entitlement and ownership some people have.

Welcome me or don't. I shan't lose any sleep over your feelings.

Everyone else, now you know - an explanation I owed to no one, but it's there.

Please have a great Sunday.

xo,

Madi


	9. Breaking Chic

A/N: Just because I love you...

Breaking Chic

"Eddie!" I yell, rushing after him. Don't run, please don't run. Not after all these years, with all these emotions crushing me.

I'm a dam about to burst - confusion and panic at his departure bearing down toward the breaking point. I was the runner, not him; never him.

"Edward Masen Cullen! Wait!" He halts, at attention with his back to me. He looks like a statue carved from stone; I'd believe it, too, but I see a single muscle twitch in his jaw as I slow at his side. "Edward. It's you."

I have to walk around him to see his face. He's so ... still. Silent.

"Aren't you going to speak to me?" I ask. "Won't you please say something?" I beg.

"I ..." His voice cracks under the stress of the single syllable, and he clears his throat. "Ma'am," he says, his only acknowledgment of my existence.

Ouch.

"It's been so long," I state the obvious, stupidly failing at small talk with the man I once loved. "How have you been?"

Edwards eyes - alight with relief - tell me a story conflicting the words from his mouth. "I'm here, aren't I?" he asks, motioning to the venue and the place and the trucks with the Wounded Warriors' logo. He's right. This is the first time in the one hundred and twenty-seven seconds of our reunion that I'm doing the addition before me: fatigues, buzzcut, the scar.

"You're in the Army?"

He scoffs at me like I'm an idiot. "Marines," he informs, obviously disgusted at the very thought that he'd gone Army.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know..."

"Because you weren't around," he finishes my sentence with something I was definitely not going to say.

"Eddie, I -"

"You've got a kid," he says, throwing me for a loop until I'm a mumbling, sputtering mess of wordless noises. Fuck. "I was curious about you awhile ago. A little brunette girl? I saw her in a picture on MySpace."

"That's Lexie, uh, Lexington - named for the battle that started the American Revolution. She was born the same day, uh, April 19." I'm spewing information like a geyser. I'm a fucking mess.

"I know of it," he says. Of course he does. He's a marine. They know these things. I guess.

"She's my middle child."

"Three kids?" His eyes are almost bulging out of his head. "When did you have time for that? Oh, that's right ..."

"It's been a decade," I remind him. "Walker is less than a year, and Reny's almost ten."

The moment moves in slow motion; his eyes harden and he steels himself. "Almost ten, huh?"

I nod, mute and stoic.

"So you went from my bed back to your real boyfriend's just like that?" The final word is accentuated with the thundering clack of the heels of his thick boots coming together. He's had enough. Enough of me; enough of the information. "'Night, Ma'am."

He's around me and walking away at a clipped pace before I register what just happened. I'm a royal disaster. I thought maybe he'd do the math and come to the correct conclusion, hoping I'd be spared from saying it aloud.

"She looks just like you," I call after him, and the words have their desired effect. Edward is before me in the blink of an eye.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he growls like a wild beast.

"Reny," I say. "She's yours."

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A/N:

I can't stop writing. I'm becoming obsessed. I literally have zero clue where each chapter is going; I'm just letting my fingers fly and the words fall where they may.

I'm as curious as y'all.


	10. May a Meteorite Fall on my Head

May a Meteorite Fall on my Head

Bullets have jackshit on guilty revelations from former lovers. Wow. I thought I knew what it was like to hurt. I didn't know shit.

She left with my baby in her, and I don't even get a simple fucking phone call or a single word from her for ten goddamn years. I need to get away. I need to get out of here. I need to think. I need to not think ever again. I need to get wasted.

I only see red; Bella's a smoky ghost I brush past. I feel like I'm tumbling down a rabbit hole. This has got to be a dream. Yeah, that's it. Or maybe I actually died in Iraq and am now wandering around a purgatory where Bella is in my ears and in my eyes but I can't touch her, and she exists only to torture my sinful soul.

She reaches out to stop me, but I tear my sleeve from her grasp. This is not happening. Fuck no. Not now, when I could say or do something I might regret.

I shoot a text message to Emmett that I'm taking a cab back to base and snap the phone shut and shove it in my pocket. This night is a joke. I'm like one hundred and thirty-two percent sure I'm getting Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher right at this moment.

But I'm not.

The cab doesn't drop me off at base; I tell him to stop at a dive bar just outside. I'll walk in when I'm done drowning my memories with whiskey. And pussy. Definitely need some pussy. Pussy always gets rid of overthinking. There are willing girls in there. Trash, trashed, ready to be trashed by me. I want to use someone the way I feel used right now.

I need to go to the range tomorrow; let off some steam, and focus my energy on recuperating so I can get away from all of this and back to war.

War I know. War I get: there's a method to it, but there's none to this madness.

War is less painful.

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A/N:

Well, Eddie didn't take that well, did he now?

Can't say I blame him.


	11. Keeping My Head Just Above the Water

A note from Madi:

You guys seriously fucking rock.

okay then.

Keeping My Head Just Above the Water

E.C.

I've sort of gone off the grid. Well, as far as a Marine in physical therapy, constantly visiting the VA hospital, and dealing with a million different thoughts can possibly go.

She's going to haunt me eternally, I just know it.

I know this because I booted up my computer and typed her name into a search engine; she's got it all. Bella is married to a guy named Jacob Black. He's loaded. He makes more money in a year than I'll see in my entire life. The dingy glass is becoming a little clearer now, and it's obvious why she made the choice she did. I couldn't have offered her much more than a single bedroom apartment in some Seattle rat's nest.

The Bella I knew—the Bella I thought I knew—wouldn't have minded that. She lived for the freedom. But I'm a grown-ass man now, and I learned that poverty is definitely _not_ freedom. I work my ass off, get shot at, to earn my pay.

I should've gone this investment banker route. Black seems to know what to do; how to take care of a family. It hurts like hell that he has the family that should be mine.

She's tried to reach out to me. Which is annoying as fuck, because I tried for all those years to no avail and now she thinks she just gets to make the effort. I choose to ignore the fact that a lot has changed in the last decade. People are easier to find, and she now has my station, rank, and unlimited resources at her disposal. She's like the face of the goddamn charity helping my sorry ass, and that makes me feel weak and helpless. I don't want to owe her anything.

How can someone just pop up out of nowhere all these years later and say, "Hey asswipe, you've got a kid," and expect it to be cool. It's not cool. _Not _fucking cool.

I really need to grow a pair and meet her for coffee like she's been asking. But there's a big part of me that wants her to suffer. I hate her. Almost as much as I loved her.

That's a lot.

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A/N:

I think it's time for Bella to do some explaining.

PS. I have a Facebook group, so please friend me and request an add if you'd like. Madi Merek. :)


	12. No Good Chic

A note from Madi:

I'm having a fucking blast with your girls on Facebook. Keep on keepin' on.

Okay then.

No Good Chic

I know I'm no good.

I spend my days at Reny's piano lessons, or Lexie's soccer practice, or taking Walker to Mommy-and-Me classes, but all I can think of it getting home to check my email and see if today is the day that Edward finally replied. If he's finally wiling to meet me.

Today, he is.

Jake knows nothing. He's been too busy. It's been a handful of months since the concert, and Jacob is freaking oblivious to his own wife's misery. It speaks volumes to our life together. He's so self-consumed. I know the feeling.

We met when he was ten; I was seven. I was the new kid in town, just moving in with Renee and Phil and away from Washington and Dad. It was a difficult transition, but Jake made it better. He was actually nice to me. He was a little older, and he didn't let the asshole kids bully me at school. I kind of loved him. He was my first crush.

Then his mom got cancer when we were teenagers. I tried to be there for him, to support him and help him deal with it, but I wasn't enough. He needed the physical parts of me more than the emotional, so he taught me how to give him a proper hand-job. When that wasn't enough, he taught me how to suck him off. He never reciprocated. And when those things weren't enough, he'd push my chest into the mattress, lube up my ass, and take me that way. I hated it, but I loved him enough to let him take out his pain on me.

Four years it went on like that.

Until the night I graduated. He was tired of the same old stuff.

I told Edward I was a virgin when we met two weeks later. It was a lie I wished was true, because the difference between the way Edward took my body and the way Jake took my virginity were worlds apart.

God, the night Edward and I had sex was majestic. He brought me through crashing waves and shooting stars and splitting atoms. I learned what it meant to be with a man who really cared; everything opposite of Jake.

The night with Jake was awful. He made me take shot after shot, until I was just drunk enough to be there with him in my body but not quite enough to stop him.

I never knew how to classify it. I never consented, but didn't technically … not consent. All I know is that I woke up with blood on my thighs and Jake pulling his jeans back on, and I wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out.

Fuck our plans for NYU. Fuck that we were supposed to be in love. Fuck him, because he fucked me that way.

Going back to him told my epic history of cheating myself. I felt indebted to him because some unseen force that brought a silly little girl and cute little boy together at a young age. Edward loosened my chains, but I was never really free—just testing the length of my rope.

I stayed with Jake because I had nothing else. Charlie would've been pissed if I came knocking on his door with a belly full of a musician's baby. Renee all but told me to marry Jake or get the fuck out. NYU happened for a whole semester before I was too pregnant and married to continue.

I had nothing else. No degree, no money of my own. Nothing. And a kid to take care of. And now, ten years later, I have nearly everything I can think of, but all I want is the chance to fix what I couldn't then.

Jake has announced his intention to run for Senate to represent New York. He's going to win. His money makes him a shoe-in. This is how politics works.

So, before our family becomes headline news and Jake is shaking hands with veterans and recovering soldiers like Edward, we all better get on the same page. If Edward doesn't want to be involved, fine. But I'm not a baby with a baby anymore. I did enough; it's time for damage-control.

I hope Edward lets me in to do this, because shit is about to get crazy.

xxxxxxxxxx

A/N:

Gosh, how many updates is this today?

I'm enjoying this so fucking much. What a blast. Each update feels like an episode of a TV show.

Thank you all for the love. Find me on FB! Madi Merek.


	13. Ding Dong, the Witch isn't Dead

Ding Dong, the Witch isn't Dead

How do you get on in life after falling so far down a hole that you have to wait and pray for a flood to fill it up and let you float out? I keep going back to us in my head. We had so much fun together. How she tossed it all away—tossed away my chance to know and love and raise my daughter—is unforgivable. She went back to him and I went out of my mind.

And here I am, waiting for her. Searching for ten fucking years has boiled down to sitting in a coffee shop while she gets driven down from New York in some fancy-ass car to beg my forgiveness for keeping our child from me. I've already resolved myself that there's no restitution for this wickedness. No way I can get over it.

But I can't forget that she's my greatest weakness. The only girl I ever loved. The girl I wanted to make proud by serving our country and becoming a hero. But I'm a complete and utter zero compared to _him_. This is why I won't even try. There's no point.

"Hello, Eddie." Her voice is sing-song in my ears, filled with music that takes me back to drumsets and needles on vinyl and fucking her on leather seats. I died a hundred times while she was away, and just the sound of my name on her lips is oxygen to embers.

"It's Edward, now," I correct, though she could call to me like a puppy-dog and I'd be at her feet. Goddamn. I was already failing at this resolution to be a badass thing. She possessed me, once upon a time, but I have to remind myself that she's no princess. She's a villain to me; the wicked witch in disguise. But fuck me sideways if she isn't a fucking beautiful sorceress.

She hesitates a moment before lowering herself into the seat before me. "Edward … right. Sorry." It sounds like she's apologizing for much more than the nickname, but it's sure as fuck not going to be that easy. "Edward, I—"

"Here you are, ma'am," a guy in a dark suit interrupts, placing an expensive-looking coffee before her.

When he walks away, she shrugs. "Sorry … uh, Jake insists I have a driver."

"Ever since he decided he wanted to be a Senator?" I ask. I figure I should keep up on the man who's raised my kid.

She shrugs. "Something like that, yeah."

"So, did you think you were ever going to tell me, Bella?"

Her eyes meet mine. They blaze as hot as the fire I remember which lives in her core. She knows what I'm talking about. "Not really, no," she admits. "I stopped thinking about it."

I lean forward on my elbows, angry—fucking angrier than I've ever been. "So you're telling me," I spew, "that you looked at our child every fucking day for all those years and you stopped _thinking_ about it?"

She twitches; she swallows hard, but she doesn't back down. Her eyes don't drop. "Yes." It's a firm answer in the face of a devil.

My palm flattens to the table with a resounding thud. Patrons of the coffee shop turn to face us, and Mister Security Guard gears up to take me down if need be. I scoff. He wishes he'd able to. "Don't fucking tell me that, Bella. Do not tell me that."

"Okay, more lies then, yes?" I forgot how stubborn she is. When I knew her, the stubbornness was buried under hurt; now it's a full-blown, festering infection of pain. "Fine. Okay. So I'm a happily married housewife, ready to break onto the campaign trail for my dearly beloved husband of ten—"

"Years?" I seethe. "You've been married to that prick for ten years?" She nods slowly and unsure. "Not only did you leave my bed and hop into his, you married him. Lovely." I'm ready to get up and walk out but she speaks again.

"It's not easy to be a pregnant teenager," she says.

"I would've taken care of you," I spit out.

"From the back of a tour van?" she bites back. "With the couple hundred dollars you split with the four other guys in the band? Sounds great, Edward. Perfect."

It hurts the most because she's right. She's hit the nail of the head, and the pain of it shoots through me.

"I … we would've figured it out, Bella. Now I'm nothing. Nothing to her, nothing to you."

"Do you want to be something to her?" she asks, grinding her teeth in frustration. "Because what happened, happened, but now's the time to change what you want."

"I can't change what I _want_ to change. There's nothing to fucking change about this situation."

"I'm suggesting you be a part of Reny's life—"

I scoff. "Damn right. I'm going to pin your ass to the ground."

"Without lawyers, Edward."

I laugh out loud in her face. "You're fucking joking. You think I'm not going to get a lawyer? After you stole my _child_ from me for an entire decade?"

"This is exactly what I'm suggesting."

"And why do you think I'll be going along with that idea?"

"For the same reason everyone does anything. Money. Money and the chance to know her without making a circus out of her mom and … dad."

I was wrong. This hurts the most.

xxxxxxxxx

A/N: I got distracted by Outlander. Yep. It's true.

I'll post tomorrow.

PS. Hi, Sharon! A coworker is now reading. Awwwwwww! 3


	14. Shit Chic

Shit Chic

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.

That was not the way it was supposed to go.

I'm sitting in my hotel room in D.C., shaking, freaking the hell out, wishing for a million-and-a-half do-overs. I laugh at my stupidity. Laugh! So hard it becomes a strangled cry of panic. How could I have made such a mess of my life?

I'm really a piece of work.

I just treated Edward the way Jake treated me. For years. The way I saw Mom treat Dad, and the way all the people in this fake life I lead treat each other.

I snapped. Fucking snapped like a rubber band. Ever since I peed on that first stick, took that first of twenty tests to confirm Reny's existence, I've been in fight or flight mode. Edward took a shot, so I threw back as hard as I could.

Years, years, I've spent melding the metals inside me to become titanium, but I'm ripping apart like aluminum foil, and I did it to myself. Not Jake. Not Mom. Not Edward. Me. Because I chose wrong. Because I was scared. Because I learned to ignore problems by shoving cash at them. Because ... Because there are no excuses for what I've done, I'll shut the fuck up.

I tend to react without thinking. No shit, right? And this is one of those moments.

I pick up the receiver of the hotel phone and dial the number I've come to know by heart - not because I've called it over and over, but because it's his.

"Whatever your selling, shove it up your ass," he says. The words are hoarse and a little slurred, and it hurts that I've done yet another thing to hurt him.

"Eddie," I say softly, speaking gently as to a skittish animal who might rear up and rip me to pieces at any moment. I wouldn't blame him. "It's Bella."

"No shit, Sherlock." I close my eyes and take a labored breath. "You can direct all calls to my attorney."

Shit. "Um, I just wanted to speak to you again. Things didn't ... I didn't say what I meant to."

"Yeah, sucks to be you. Again," he continues, "questions can be directed to my attorney."

That was fast. An attorney on hand already? Maybe he came in with one and way just testing me. This is going to blow up in my face. "Okay, I understand. We can exchange information." Suddenly our old life and daughter is treated like a fender-bender on a street in suburbia. I did this. "What's your attorney's name?"

I hear shuffling and someone snort and muffled voices as Edward's hand obviously covers the speaker. "Uh ... McCarty. Emmett McCarty," he says. Someone laughs in the background, but I'm already typing the name into Google.

"Edward, I'm sorry, I can't seem to find him. Can you tell me the law firm he's with?"

More background noise.

"Edward?"

"Mrs. Black?" a man's voice asks.

I swallow hard and rub the bridge of my nose between my fingers. "Yeah, speaking."

"This is Corporal Emmett McCarty. I'm no attorney, but a word of advice," he says. "Edward is on his way up to hash a few things out. I'd be ready if I were you. Don't fuck this one up. It took me a couple of hours to convince him to speak to you ever again."

A knock at the door confirms everything this Emmett guy just said. I hang up the phone without taking my eyes off the door. Time creeps by as I move toward it, stopping for a moment to check the redness of my eyes and the flush of anger in my cheeks. I'm a mess. Like everything else.

I open the door to equally bloodshot eyes, though I doubt his are a result of crying the way mine are.

"Edwa-" I don't get to finish his name because his mouth covers mine. In the splitting of a second, a decade crumbles and I'm back there with him; before the mess, before I destroyed worlds, before it all. Back to where it's him and me and nothing else.

I've missed the taste of his tongue and the sounds he makes into my mouth when he loses himself in kissing me. I thought I'd forgotten all about them; thought I put them all out of my mind, but there's no way that happened. He's the drug I remember fleetingly, but so much more potent.

And then he's gone, backed against one wall while I'm pushed against another by an invisible hand.

He speaks. Hushed. Firm. "I'm going to be in her life. I'm going to be in your life. Just wait and see, and don't you dare fuck me over this time. I call the shots."

I'm nodding and agreeing before I think.

And then he leaves, and I know suddenly what that feels like.

xxxxx

A/N:

Thank you all for the passion you have. Love or hate them (read: her), they're bringing out the fire in you. That is the greatest gift to me.


	15. Pain Chic

Pain Chic

I'm absent in the present, dwelling in the past, even as my family sits at the formal dining table and mutters about in bleak conversation. Lexie is telling Jake all about soccer and her plans to go to soccer camp this summer. This will be a short debate, though Jake would prefer she be on the campaign trail with us - happy family illusions and all that jazz - she'll win in the end. She has Jake wrapped around her little finger in a way Reny never could.

He may be, and is, a less than perfect husband; there is nothing between us but the padding we've created, but he's a fantastic father to his children. He dotes upon Lexie and Walker with the love only a father can possess.

But not Reny, and this has kept me firmly against giving him more of myself - my heart - than I already have. There's little love lost between the two of them. They're fire and ice, and the older she gets the more she knows.

Reny harbors no ill will toward the man she calls dad, but she grew up knowing he wasn't hers biologically. She didn't press the topic of her father, because she saw the way my face fell and the tears filled my eyes back then. She saw enough of it to stop asking all together. I see the flicker of envy in her eyes when he listens to Lexie tell her tales and only acknowledges Reny's accomplishments with a "good job."

When dinner is over, the plates are cleared, and the kids head up to bed, I know I must speak with Jake. I've been putting it off, trying to deal with it on my own, but the time has come to involve him.

I rap on the door of his office and wait for permission to enter. The room is stuffy, the scent of cigars and brandy linger. He's such a politician already.

"What do you need?" he asks without looking up from his computer.

This is the bluntness I've come to live with; live by. "Just because I want to talk to you, doesn't mean I need anything, Jake." It's kind of a truth, kind of a lie.

"Everybody needs something. You're usually looking for a new pair of shoes or something, or permission for a weekend away. Am I right?"

Actually, he is. I am going away for the weekend, but it's less about permission than telling. "I'm taking Reny to the beach this weekend. Just she and I and the Carolina sun," I say. It's mostly true. I leave out the part about Edward. I don't really know if I can say it aloud to Jake yet.

Finally, he looks up. Black eyes bore a hole into my skull. Slowly, he lowers his reading glasses from his nose. "Would this have anything to do with a Marine you've met with recently?" he asks.

Shit. "No - I ..." I don't know what the fuck to say.

"Do you think I don't know that you're fucking around? You think I care? You think I don't know that you're a whore and always have been?" He rises from his chair and I back up quickly, wanting, needing an escape, but my back hits the solid door. "You go fuck the jarhead and I'll spend my time with Leah and Tanya and Jane." All women on his campaign committee. Lovely.

"I haven't touched a man in all the years we've been married!" I shout.

"No? But you fucking ruined my life by getting knocked up by that asshole. You make me look like an idiot because she's obviously nothing like me." He's in my face and his fist is under my chin, ready to do damage. "See. You're a whore, Bells! A whore! And you are not taking Reny with you. Not a fucking chance."

"She's meeting her father," I insist, but it's gasoline not water to the fire in my husband. He grabs me by the hair and throws me onto the leather sofa I picked out for him on his birthday last year. "Stop! You're hurting me, Jake!" I shriek.

He doesn't care. He's blind with rage and hurt and anger, and I know this side of him well. He's pushing down my yoga pants, tearing at my lace thong, taking what he believes is his to take.

"Stop it!" I yell. But he doesn't. "Stop. Jake, please stop!" I cry out over and over until it's nothing more and sobs lipping through my chest. I'm his wife and he'll have what he sees as his.

When he finished, and I'm aching and sore and crying on the fine leather, he pushes me off his dick so I fall forward.

"Go. Get the fuck out and take her with you. Show her what a bitch you are, but tell her she better not forget she's mine. She may be his DNA, but she's mine, and she will never be a whore like you or I'll destroy you both."

xxxxxx

A/N:

I cried while I wrote this.

It's all gray.

Abuse colors the world with bruises, and the story you think you know may only be the tip of the iceberg.


	16. Purple-Green-Yellow Chic

Purple-Green-Yellow Chic

How many wives are abused by their husbands? How many women have lost their strength to stop a significant other from causing emotional, mental, physical pain? I don't know the numbers, but I can guess. And it's a hell of a lot.

Jake never left bruises before. He knew I was someone the public would see and any discoloration of my porcelain skin was sure to draw attention. Somewhere between the time my husband used me like a whore on the sofa and the early hours before dawn, he changed his mind about painting me black and blue.

And then he cried. He broke down beside my aching body on our bed and cried like he's never cried before - not when his dad died, not when his mom was diagnosed the second and third times. He sobbed until the pillowcase was soaked through with salty tears.

"Why did you make me do this, Bells?" he cried. "Why do you have to make me so angry. You're my life and you're tearing me apart."

My gut wrenched. These were words I was utterly too familiar with; accusations I heard regularly, beginning the day I told him I was pregnant with Reny. They were only finger-sized bruises that day, though.

"You're my goddamn life. Don't take my life away. I'll die without you," he sobbed.

I've known two truths in my life: I am nothing, and guilt is the most powerful slave-master.

"Remember, Bells," Jake whispered as his tears slowed to a trickle. "Remember, you left me when Mom needed me most. You were gone when Dad died. And still I took you back. I took care of you. And now you want to leave me?"

"I'm not leaving you, Jake," I rushed a whisper to him, my hand instinctively raising to sweep tears off his face.

"You are. You are leaving. And you're taking Reny, and I was her dad for all this time, and you're leaving our kids, and you're breaking up our family, and you're hurting us. All you do is hurt people," he whimpered like an injured dog.

He's right. Each time he says these words, I'm reminded. I can't leave my kids. I can't leave them here, and I could never leave him because there's nowhere to go and nothing for me beyond these walls. I'm a prisoner of circumstance.

"I'm not leaving, Jacob," I insisted again. "I only want to make sure Reny meets Edw-him, so it's over and done."

"You're such a liar. Such a liar. Such a fucking liar," he said, punching the pillow beside my head with a force which rattles the bed and makes me jump. "Don't lie to me. I can't live without you."

I'm consumed by guilt.

I make sure to get to the restaurant before Edward, and to get a seat on the patio so I'll have a reason to keep my sunglasses on. The less Edward sees of my bruised flesh, the better. I won't be able to stand the rage in his eyes, or worse ... pity.

Reny is sitting on the sand, listening to the new Apple thingy Jake's mom (once again in remission) got her for her birthday. She's really excited about this iPod, and she and I spent hours loading music onto it. Her red hair blows behind her in the sea breeze, and freckles play on her skin.

"Bella." I hear Edward's voice behind me before he takes a seat at the table. He's dressed in khaki shorts and a blue Nirvana tee, with a SeaHawks cap on his head. He's so fucking handsome I want to melt like ice cream on a hot day in July. But he's not mine to melt for.

"Edward," I breathe, relieved he's here, though I know this isn't easy for anyone involved. "Hi."

He orders a sweet tea and waits for the waitress to scurry off before asking, "So, where is she?"

"Look, I want to make sure she's comfortable first," I sidetrack. "She's looking forward to meeting you, but she's just a kid, too ..." My voice trails off because he isn't even paying attention to me. His eyes are focused on her because she's standing right before us. His eyes take in her red hair and Amy Winehouse shirt and skull earrings.

"Are you my dad?" she asks plainly, simply, with the curiosity of a child.

"Reny," I begin, but Edward cuts me off.

"I'd sure like the chance to be, kiddo."

Her face scrunched up in humor. "I'm not a kid anymore. I'm growing up fast. Everyone says I look like Mom."

I'm in a state of emotional shock, watching the two interact as though they've know each other from her first breath.

"You look just like your mom," he agrees with the world on this note.

"But Mom says I look just like you."

Edward glances at me for the first time since he arrived; thankfully not long enough to detect the bruises marring my skin.

"You're a pretty good mix, Reny," he counters with a wink toward her and then turns back to me. "How long are you here for?" he asks.

"Four days. Since you said you're on leave, we figured we'd make ourselves available ... uh, Reny would be available for whatever time you want to spend with her." Shit. I don't want him to have the wrong idea. We haven't so much as mentioned the kiss in the hotel room two months ago.

"Yeah," he nods, and for the first time in ten years, I see the excitement lighting his eyes the way my memory recalls. "That sounds like a good plan."

xxxxxxx

A/N:

Let's see how this plays out, shall we?


	17. Shattered Ceilings

Shattered Ceilings

E.C.

The best thing I can do in this moment is stop pretending the bruises on her skin don't exist. A million questions pose ready to strike on the tip of my tongue, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to address them. She isn't mine; hasn't been for a long time, but that doesn't mean there's any part of this that's okay with me.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, deciding to push aside my worry about the mother and focus on the child, or deal with the mother like so many parts of me are screaming to. But it doesn't have to be one or the other. The two are not mutually exclusive.

When Reny is done dragging me around the boardwalk, making me ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and Hammer, and all the carnival things that leave me wanting to puke up all the cotton candy the little girl just shoved down my throat, she's exhausted. Bella insists they head back to their beach house rental and let Reny get some rest.

Shit. It must be hard to be ten. I choose to not remember life back then, because that's when Dad left and Mom started binge drinking to solve her problems.

When the door to Reny's room is shut, you can hear the squeak of the hinges echoing because everything is silent; every nail and screw and plank knows that Bella and I are alone. Each piece of wood holds its breath to see what's next.

"Well, what do you think?" Bella asks. I wish I could say she's pretending now, but I really don't think she is. The moments ticking by show me new layers of this girl - woman - I loved. This isn't her. This isn't normal. This isn't right.

And as much as I'd like to watch her hurt the way I have all these years, I'm kind of afraid she already knows the feeling. I know what it's like to get hit by someone who's supposed to love you. Each bottle of Jack mom went through was another in a series of her knuckles marring my body. I was a scratching post for someone else's illness, and it's never okay.

"How long has he been hitting you, Bella?" I cut straight to the point. I'm quickly learning this is the only way to get anywhere with her. My forwardness speaks to the person buried alive inside those stony walls.

Even now, while she's flipping through emotions and reactions and responses like a remote to a television, I see flickers of her inside. She's a mustang whose been captured and trained to do as she's told and not question the hand she's been dealt. Her spirit - that wildness inside her I love more than my next breath - has been broken.

"Let's not, Edward," she finally says, the politician's wife winning the battle of wills within. She's all business, but I'm not about to back down.

"No, let's," I demand. "Let's do this. Right here. Right now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Her insistence makes me wickedly angry. More than I've been in the months since she popped back into my life. And I'm in front of her, pulling the sunglasses off her face while she shrinks away from me.

"I'm not him. I'm not going to fucking hit you, Bella!" I seethe. I'm so fucking ... mad. Mad with anger and mad with pain and crazy with the need to kill the man who did this to her. "How long?" I ask. "How long?" I demand. "How. Fucking. Long?"

She's running toward a room at the back of the house before I can blink, and my legs are leading me to her before my mind can catch up. The door shuts in my face and when I try to open it, I feel the weight of her pressing against it, keeping it closed; shutting me out.

I knock until she yells for me to go away. Then I push - not nearly as hard as I'd like in the moment, but enough to get the door open. She's sprawled on the floor with her head in her hands, bawling. Crying like she's a dam bursting under the pressure of a decade's worth of rain. This is the amount of tears she sheds, I'm certain.

And I don't ask. Not now. Not in this moment, because she doesn't need me to fix it this second. She needs arms to hold her.

xxxxxxx

A/N:

Thank you for your passion for these characters and the story.

Thank you from the bottom of the heart of a formerly broken girl.


	18. Burning Chic

Burning Chic

I don't know how long he's been here with me. The sky has darkened past twilight and I've lost all track of anything but him. I miss this the most: his arms holding me so I don't fall deeper into the abyss. He's always known how to hold me up—from those first moments in Seattle, when a broken little girl was learning to heal from young-love's betrayal, to a fractured woman who's been destroyed by it all over again.

I've wept and cried while he rocks me back and forth in his solid grip, and I feel for the first time in many years that maybe the shattered parts of me could be put back together as a stained glass window instead of thrown into the trash like a clay pot. Edward reminds me that where there is brokenness, there can once again be light, making even the floating and dancing dust beautiful again with scattered hues of rainbows.

But I'm afraid of burning; I always have been, and I'm surrounded by it.

On one side a flaming forest, sparked by lightning and burning the world to ash, and the other a refiner's fire. I've nowhere to go where I won't be set ablaze.

My mind jumps around to different thoughts: escape, stay, run, fight, march, bow down, kill, sacrifice. Nothing stays in place, for there is no steadiness. I can't leave, it's never been that simple. I've played the quite wife for so long, it's become my reality. But I can't stay either.

I steel my mind for a moment, long enough to look up at him. Edward's head is resting on the mattress and his eyes are closed while he cradles me in his lap. It's been hours, but he doesn't complain. I think he's trying to lift the burden off of me and carry it by taking my weight onto himself. It's not his to bear, but I now he won't see it that way.

He's too good, and my heart aches with the pain of years long gone and time missed. I wish to take back all the lost moments, to become the girl I was and stay in the past with him. I'm in love with ghosts—his and mine, and that strength I've sacrificed both unknowingly and unrealized.

I've lied to myself for many years, saying I've stayed for the children and that they can't have a shattered life like mine was when Mom left Dad. I want better for them. But how much better can it be to have a father filled with power and rage and a mother made only of submission? They've been born of splinters of me. How can I save them and build them into the glass with me if I can't save myself?

My lips touch Edward's neck of their own admission, hoping the touch might heal wounds so deep within me I've become sick with infection. To my mind, he's a saint and a single brush of my skin to his will create miracles in me. Oh, but to be that simple.

Goosebumps break out under my lips, his nerves responding to mine with the electricity that's always crackled between us. I pull back, moving away from his skin before we fuse, but it's no use. Our shadows and fates and souls meld instantly, and my retreat is matched by his advance.

He lifts me from his lap to the bed, and I know only lips and flushing flesh as noises escape my chest in a prayer of deliverance. My body hasn't known pleasure in a long time. Too long. But it recognizes its mate in him: the only man to draw a release from my pores and cracked and marred life.

I'd like to believe I know him like I think I do, but I don't.

He's a different man than the boy I knew, and the way he touches me says it all. Life has hardened and matured him; he shows and teaches me with the brush of his fingers and tongue. Everything in me screams for him, and even the sound pours from my throat. I'm melting beneath him, then around him when our passion penetrates the surface.

A part of him loves me still, maybe never stopped, and I meet him there. He drinks my body in, following me into the fire of refining and pushing me deeper until there's nothing but white light.

I exhale into new life.

xxxxxxxxxx

A/N: A little heavy on the poetic side, but my fingers have a mind of their own this morning.

KIT music inspiration.


	19. Wastelands

Hi. **runs and hides**

xxxxx

Wastelands

I remember our first time.

She was wearing yellow underwear and no bra. I easily recall to memory the scent of her body spray from the Bath and Body Works she dragged me to that morning. She probably tried on a hundred scent before falling back on what she called "an old favorite"—cucumber melon. I didn't understand its appeal until it mixed with the smell of her.

We parked in a field overlooking the Forks High football field in her dad's red Ford. We sat there, eating ham sandwiches and drinking too-sour lemonade. We drove out there that night to watch the lunar eclipse, but it ended up watching us make love in the bed of that pickup instead.

She was strong for a girl without experience; she only flinched a little when I entered her—just a little pained cry escaped her lips. But then she was right there with me in that moment. And there was no one else.

She was the best I ever had. My very own wilderness to be free and wild in.

And now she's grown up—I'm grown up—and I want to give her all I've got. She's got our kid and my heart tied up in a bitter package. I went from hating to loving her in two-and-a-half seconds. But she's my hemlock, and what I want and what I'll get may be two different things.

"Cullen, bogies, twelve o'clock." I respond with a shower of gun fire and see the enemy drop. I need to focus or I'm going to be back in that fucking hospital, or worse. And I want to see my Reny again.

She's my new light, shining and smiling at me from the end of the tunnel. Our moments together in person, and now on video chatting, have been accentuated by her quick acceptance of me and easily-given admiration. I wish I was with her, but she's at school and I'm hell. Only a desert and a world away.

Away from protecting her and her mom.

I'd tear my hair out by the roots if it was long enough. I can't stand this, but she says she'll deal with it. We argued—yelled and screamed for three hours the morning she and Reny left the beach house—about the fact that she was going home to … _him_. I can't force her to go forward with the abuse accusations, but I see how terrified she is of him. She's scared of what he'll do to the kids if she tries to leave with them.

I've learned his money and his power reach farther and farther than I could have imagined.

They reach into the White House, which I have a sneaking suspicion is the reason for my very specific assignment to the coming assault on Fallujah. He knows who I am and what I am to his wife and our daughter. I only pray he doesn't know the depth of what we are, because then she'll never be safe and I'll be dead before I can get to her.

Everyday, another of my buddies comes back with bullet holes or a blown off leg or worse. It's fucking hell, but I wish I were walking through the hell she's in now for her. I need to get out. Get the fuck _out_. There's nothing I can do from here.

The election back home is tomorrow, and I've been following the polls. Black is two points behind in his Senate bid. It's not much, and he may not win, but it's going to be close. And the only way I'm getting back to her is if Kerry wins the national election, but I really don't know if that's going to happen.

When my platoon gets back to base, we're weathered and in much need of rest. But there'll be no sleep for me tonight.

The guys are watching news from home, and all I see is her face on the screen with video of a sheet-covered body on a gurney being wheeled from a New York mansion. And I'm sick in the sand, throwing up everything inside of me, but I can hear each word from the television.

"New York Republican candidate for Senate Jacob Henry Black II was pronounced dead at his Manhattan home of a gunshot wound to the head."

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A/N: Are you still with me?


	20. Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang Chic

A/N: My favorite comments on the previous chapter: "Wow!" OMG!" and "Oh, shit. I did not see that coming."

Read on.

xxxxxx

Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang Chic

One day earlier

I love the city in winter, dusted in snow like a powdered sugar doughnut. I'm the jelly filling; the weakling who thinks I'm the shit. I'm nothing.

Edward returned to his war and I returned to mine. His is sand and guns and bombs, and mine cameras and smiles and fake kisses before crowds of people. The fact is that I remain at odds with the gods of providence.

The campaign is nearly over, though I don't understand how Jake thinks he'll win as a republican in New York. He trusts his money and connections will win this for him, and I believed it too before I saw the latest numbers.

There's been a beautiful reprieve of his regime with nearly every moment spent trying to manipulate the people of this state to vote for him. What's kept him away has provided me a breath of freedom, allowing me room to plan a route to freedom.

Yesterday, Dad and I spoke for the first time in nine years. His voice, cracking and broken and aged through the phone and thousands of miles, brought a wellspring of tears coursing up from the darkest parts of my soul. He doesn't know the details for my escape yet, hopefully he never will, but he believes enough in me to trust when I say I need to leave my husband. He's offered a place to stay for me and the kids; a way out.

Charlie will be here tomorrow morning, driving all the way from Washington like any loving father whose child calls to for help would do. The timing couldn't be better: Jake will be making his final campaign stop in Buffalo before coming back to the city for Election Day, so he'll be half a state away when we leave the house.

I've sent an email to Edward, telling him where to find me and the kids, and what to say if he's asked. I only pray he gets out of there. Fast. I don't know if I can remain in Washington long without Jake putting two and two together.

Fuck. I don't know if I can even remain in the States. My husband's money and power are far stretching. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Shit. Shit. Maybe I didn't think this through. When Edward and I talked about this after yelling and screaming before Reny and I left North Carolina, it seemed simple enough ... but nothing is simple. Nothing.

The day fades to night, and I pack a single bag for the children and another for myself. We must travel light and quick, and too much baggage will weigh down the movement. This is proverbial to my life and the way I've conducted myself in the past decade. I've stayed sedentary while the world grew and changed around me.

I cannot sleep during the night, and hope my racing mind will calm when I'm beside my dad and on the way to Nowhereville, Washington. Nowhereville is exactly where I need to be. I'll tell him everything, I promise myself, but not before I get out of this house. The walls here are filled with lies; angry, painful memories stare at me throughout the early morning hours, threatening to spill all my secrets.

The alarm clock beeps at four, telling me it's time. Time for a breaking dawn and breaking free. I wish I could set it all on fire, and if I'd put more thought into it, perhaps I could've faked our deaths or something more dramatic to put Jake off our trail, but there's no time.

One hours and seventeen minutes later, I wish I had burnt it all to the ground. The trigger is pulled, the powder explodes, the hammer blows the bullet through shattering skull fragments, and blood and brain matter from my husband splatters on the façade walls of our life.

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A/N: And the plot thickens. We aren't done yet, folks. I don't have a final chapter count since I write as I go, but we aren't there yet.


	21. Just a Word from a Sad, Sad Girl

A/N: So "Queen of Cliffies" is added to my title? I'll take it.

"Her Majesty, Queen QuinnLark, Ruler of Angst and Cliffies."

Fascinating!

;)

Enjoy!

Just a Word from a Sad, Sad Girl

E.C.

I rest my chin in my hand. My brain feels heavy and full, and stare out the plane window as the wings slice through clouds made from the billions of gallons of water beneath my feet. The vodka on this goddamn flight isn't strong enough for today.

We land at JFK and I'm escorted away from my gate by a team of suits and into a black car. Reny, Lexie, and Walker are with their grandma, Renee Clayton, but I'm going to get my girl. I'm not leaving her with that evil bitch after what Bella has told me.

I think Mrs. Clayton would've slammed the door in my face if my attorney - a real one this time - hadn't been present, and if Reny hadn't run to me with her arms open.

"Dad!" She screams, leaping to me and sobbing on my shoulder. "This is terrible. Why are they doing this to my mom?" She's a little girl in a sad world, and there's nothing I can say to make it go away. I'm no author of fairytales for my daughter, and I cannot create something with puzzle pieces that don't fit together.

The only foundation we have put in place is that Jacob Black died of a gunshot wound to the head, the initial investigation is still underway, and Bella Swan-Black is being held for questioning.

Her attorney, Garrett Rosenberg, is a firecracker and the only reason I'm taking a breath in this moment. I'm promised he's the biggest defense attorney in New York, and he's all hers. My attorney and hers have arranged a meeting for us, and I'll head there as soon as my daughter packs her things. But she won't. She refuses to leave Lexie and Walker. Reny is the perfect big sister, and my heart is full of pride for her.

So I sit in a single-windowed room beside Alec MacPherson, my lawyer, and Bella's ... we wait. The attorneys busy themselves with reading the paperwork before them, but I'm lost to my mind. Could she have done something so drastic? The woman I saw that day in the beach house was shattered and pained, but not capable of murder.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it wasn't murder. It was self-defense. Yes. That's its.

Or maybe she didn't pull the trigger at all.

Her father is the one who called for an ambulance. I know that from what my attorney has told me, and they've cleared Charlie of suspicion because they have a time stamp on the toll bridge when he entered the city. He couldn't have been in two places at once.

There isn't much to go on here, and I'm waiting. Just waiting.

And it's all blurry with lights flashing and words echoing around. Either I'm exhausted or I'm not really here, but there are a million things happening at once.

Bella enters the room with a detective escorting her. Rosenberg asks if she's under arrest and when the investigator says Bell is not, that there has been a turn in the case, and the attorney ensures she's released into his custody. Now we don't have to do this here. We don't have to talk where the walls have ears.

We leave the precinct to a slew of photographers and reporters snapping pictures, hoping for some sign of guilt or innocence by capturing her soul on film. Election Day isn't worth the news coverage to miss the moment she leaves the police station. And I wish I'd thought this through. I'm in my uniform, proper and professional, and easy to spot as I walk behind her. I can only imagine the way they'll start guess and digging to find out who and what I am to the slain Senate candidate's wife.

We enter an Escalade with dark windows and the attorneys slip in after us.

"What the fuck happened, Bella?" I ask as soon as the doors shut and only my and our attorney's ears are privy to the information from her mouth.

"He's dead. They don't have the evidence to hold or charge me with it, so I'm released. They'll keep investigating." Her words are only informative, nothing deep; no exposure to light.

I look at her lawyer and know he's not letting anything in his poker face slip. I'm as lost as Reny, I come to realize, and I don't know who will be here to rescue any of us if it blows up.

When we arrive at a Manhattan penthouse, Rosenberg tells us the kids are on their way, and I hope this will chip at some of the scared, heavy ice blocking her from me.

"Did you ...?" I ask.

Her hazel eyes meet mine, and a bolt of lightning shoots through them. "I ... Nope." Her p pops, and I'm left to stare at her back as the children come rushing into the room and she gathers them up in her arms.

xxxxxxx

A/N:

Only a few more chapters, people!

And the end ... It'll blow a few minds. ((Get it? LOL))


	22. Puzzle Piece Chic

Puzzle Piece Chic

I'd like to say it's easy to fall apart and stand back up, but I've done it over and over again, and it's getting to the point where my legs are too weak to hold my weight.

A month passes, and another, and it feels as though they'll never figure out who the fuck shot my husband. It's getting sickeningly annoying, because as long as it takes them to solve it, that's how long it will take me to stop hearing about him, to stop the mourning I'm supposed to do, the grieving I'm supposed to feel, stop the charade that I'm not grateful he's gone.

They've questioned me on the events of those early morning hours so many times; I know them by heart - the sound of his as it stopped pumping when I screamed and dropped to my knees beside him, by smell - the scent of gunpowder and his cologne, by taste - the iron of his blood splattering on my shocked lips the moment it happened.

And I tell them over and over until I'm blue in the face. Jake did not shoot himself! There's a dot they aren't connecting, but I can't do it for them. I don't have the information and resources they've got. I wish I could solve it; wish I could bring some solace to my family and his mom and my world, but I can't do their job for them.

Yes. Jake showed up the morning of his death, though he was supposed to be in Buffalo. Yes, he told me about the spyware on the computer and how he'd read the email I sent Edward the night before. I've told the police this. But they just don't get it.

I also know that dot is in their files, the information at their fingertips, but they either haven't discovered or don't understand the connection.

There's so little I can do, but I want only to move on in my life. Edward and the kids deserve that.

When Edward makes love to me, he frees my mind from thinking of these darknesses. I'm alive and light in him, and there are is so much to live for now. He's everything the kids need; everything I need.

He doesn't ask me about it anymore, and he refuses to query about the final moments with Jake, but I know there's a curiosity in his eyes I cannot put out by riding him to the edge and back. He comes to his knees for me, but he's not kneeling to his queen. We are equals, he and I, and that is all I want. All I've ever wanted.

He brings his part and I bring mine, and there's nothing in between.

The kids are at school when Edward answers a knock on the door in his fatigue pants and dog tags - just those - and I suck in an excited breath at the scratch marks on his skin from nails. He's all mine. After all these years, life's brought us full circle.

"We'd like to speak to Mrs. Black." I recognize the voice of detective Esme Brown. Edward keeps her and her partner at the front door and waits for me.

"Detective," I say as I approach. "What can I do for you today?"

"May we come in?" the detective asks. There's no point in giving them the cold shoulder. Maybe, at last, they've put together the final piece of the puzzle lain out so perfectly.

We sit and sip coffee, and Edward runs his hand down my back, over and over like an eternal flame. We wait while Esme looks around the room, glancing at photos and everything Jake's. Then she stops at one - one on his campaign with his supporters all around. And there it is.

"His campaign staff seems close," she muses. "Do you know this man?" She points at the photograph and the man standing beside my late husband. "More so, how well did Jacob know Royce King?"

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A/N:

Nothing is as it seems.

Nothing ever is.

Though of some of you are pretty damn close.


	23. Break the Chic

Break the Chic

"Royce King?" I ask. "I'm, yeah ... He's Jake's campaign manager. Finance guy from old money. Why?"

Detective Brown places the picture back on the mantle and looks at me with eyes full of concern. And I see it.

"We've informed your attorney that your husband's death was ruled a homicide. Based on the range of the blood splatter and the lack of GSR on his hands, the evidence suggests a gunman." Yes. Get on with it already. I know where this will lead them. "Mrs. Black, Royce King was found dead in his Upper East Side home two nights after Jacob's death. There was no connection that first day, but when we dug into his financial, we noticed the contributions to Mr. Black's campaign. The circumstances of his death leaves no room for question. It was suicide. The gun was in his mouth when he pulled the trigger himself."

"What does this have to do with Jake's death," I ask - lead. Edward studies me silently; watches for any sign of emotional turmoil. He'll find none.

"Further digging has presented a new theory, and we're hoping you'll shine some light on it for us. Bank statements indicate that Mr. King and Mr. Black were often staying in the same hotel. Do you know if their connection went beyond campaign manager and candidate?"

I scoff inwardly. They won't have it that easy. "He stays in the same hotel with his staff all the time, Detective. What are you suggesting?" They aren't pushing hard enough.

"We're suggesting they had a relationship, Mrs. Black." Finally. "Your husband and Mr. King had a vacation planned together for April, and there's nothing to suggest this isn't the case."

"You're saying my husband is - was - gay?" I pretend to be in confused denial. I'm so good at pretending. It's been my life for years.

Esme Brown nods and looks at me with apology, as if I'm a lost and mourning wife she's breaking terrible news to. "This is exactly what I'm suggesting, Mrs. Black. Mr. King left a suicide note, filled with sorrow for his lover and the regrets of his actions. We now believe those actions and regrets to be referencing the murder of your husband."

A cry escapes my chest. A real one. Because finally, they've built on the foundation laid so beautifully before them. Maybe I'll be free of the knowledge and memory.

Dot: connected.

hchchchchchchchchchchc

Three years and a million moments later...

Our house is a stronghold, and Edward is mine. He's everything for me and the children. And I wish pure happiness and completeness could flow here. Most of the time it does. He gives me more than I could imagine.

But I've traded one fear for another. Jake is gone, but the threat stretches beyond the grave.

The secrets are so much. It physically aches inside of me, and only Edward soothes the burn.

He is light and day where there was darkness and night.

The more time that passes, the lighter and lighter the burden weighs on me, but it never disappears. Admission locks itself away deep in my mind.

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A/N:

One more. Maybe two. And an "alternate ending" for my best bitch.


	24. Bittersweet Disposition

Bittersweet Disposition

E.C.

I married her four years after our reunion. Her and the kids and wild blossoms were all I wanted when we pledged to release the past and forge ahead to the future. That's exactly what I got.

I took her far away from New York, away from the pain and the memories, and back home to the peace and serenity that comes for us only in Washington State.

She found comfort in life, and strength in me.

We make our home in a cabin I built, and it was everything to us. Absolutely everything. Her life was turned one hundred and eighty degrees around, but it's perfect. I can't give her Louboutins and she doesn't want then. The reminders of the life she had aren't comparable to the life we lead together.

Needless to say, I didn't reenlist when my time was up. The fear of the far-stretching ghost of Jake was enough for me to be forbidden from any continued service to the country. It's also part of the reason we seclude ourselves enough to be known but rarely seen.

She's scared. I keep a stash of weapons under the floorboards and in the rafters. She feels safer knowing we can hole up and protect ourselves if the time comes. But I don't know why that time would ever need to come.

My Bella pretends she doesn't feel the panic, but I see it in her jittery movements and jerking eyes. And I calm her as best I can. I quiet my love with the soft sound of my voice in her ears.

Jake has been dead three-and-a-half years, but I he haunts her still - this man who tortured her. She tortured me those years we were apart, but now I have everything I want. She's my heart and soul and the very blood coursing through my veins. My heart beats for her and the kids, and that baby growing in her womb right now. I get to be here and watch her body grow with our child.

I place a vinyl on the turntable - Mazzy Star, and Fade Into You begins. She whimpers a little as I slip into bed behind her, and the fireplace keeps us warm on this cool spring night. My hands smooth her long waves, and I kiss a trail of fire down her body - mountains and valleys of her beauty soften under my lips. This woman holds my every breath in her own lungs, and I cannot breathe until she does.

A breath is passed from her lips when my mouth touches her; another when I come up for the air she permits me. I enter her with a stifled cry of my own, my perfect match is this woman. We were made to fit together this way, and meant to be one until the end of eternity.

She's most beautiful when her body surrenders its passion and bliss to me. So beautiful it tears at the chords in my body, beats at the drum of my heart. She pulls everything from me; allows nothing to be held back. I couldn't if I tried.

But there's a sliver she's held back, and though I may never know the fullness of the truth, I fill that missing piece up with more of me.

xxxxxxx

A/N:

Thank you all for the fantastic reviews. Your theories are AWESOME to read.

A couple of chapters left. Yes, we'll find out the whole truth. Wait for it...


	25. Hallelujah Chic

A/N: Welcome to the jungle of truths.

Thank you for joining us on this murder mystery train. Please come again. ;)

I love you all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hallelujah Chic

October 31, 2014

Each of us will face a moment of reckoning.

Jacob Henry Black met his fate one snowy day at the end of October. When the ghosts went out to play, his joined their chorus and floated away to oblivion. He released me from his fists and iron grip. He allowed my body a reprieve from pain.

I allowed him no such thing.

The final report from the detectives deemed his death murder at the hands of Royce King. Death was an easy escape for Jacob, Dad told me. Everyone echoed these words after the truth of his abuse became public record.

Edward held my hand and encouraged me softly when Katie Couric interviewed me and began asking me questions about my relationship with Jake. Ten years after his death, and people were still interested in the twisted would-be Senator's murder. This was my chance to admit the abuse, to confess the pain he put me through.

Twenty-five years after first being diagnosed with cancer, Jake's mom finally succumbed to the mutated and deadly cells. The children and I attended her funeral in the spring, and they said goodbye to their grandmother. I'd always loved the woman; no matter how terrible her son was, she loved me in a way my own mother never had.

After she died—the wife of a former New York Congressman, the mother of a murdered politician—I couldn't hold back any longer. I'd given her most of Jake's money after his death. It afforded her the best cancer treatment money could buy, and now it was willed back to my kids. But with her gone, I could finally come forward with what I'd endured without causing her more pain.

Lexie sits beside me, pretending to study for the final exams of her senior year. Walker told me he didn't want to see this; doesn't want to know about his biological father. He has no memories of him, and Edward is the only dad he's ever known. I don't blame my little boy. Edward drove Walker and Masen over to Charlie's for a night of trick-or-treating.

My husband and Reny arrive home at the same time. She drove up from Stanford to be with me tonight. it's about to play, and while I was there for the interview, present and accounted for, I'm interested to see how Ms. Couric portrays me after the final cut.

Dramatic music and the story of how a little girl and little boy became best friends, then lovers, is being told. My face and his are on the screen. Everything is surreal. Katie doesn't say where I'm living with my family, but if _she_ wanted to find out, she could.

The abuse is made public, the bruises and pain and his secret life.

I take a sip of my pipping-hot coffee and look out the window upon a rainy Washington night. A lifetime has passed.

But I remember it all.

Ten years after his blood splattered the ivory Givenchy suit I bought for the campaign trail. A decade since my gold Chanel booties were marred with his rusty life. A lifetime since he dirtied my cyan area rug, and I still haven't forgiven him for that one. I loved that rug. I wish I'd thought to change my clothes and put down some plastic first.

I'll never forget the day I met Rosalie Andrews in a quiet coffee shop on Park Avenue. She was skinny as a rail—looked like she'd been strung out for days—this was the first things I noticed; the second was that she had bruises she didn't even bother to cover up. I recognized those bruises. They looked so much like mine.

When she contacted me a week before I took Reny to see Edward that first time, I didn't believe her. I wanted to, if only to have a firm reason to leave, but I didn't. Jake wasn't what she was saying.

Then I began to look for the signs of the heavy secret in my husband: the way he hated looking at me, the tension in his body language when in meetings with his campaign staff … but specifically his campaign manager. Rosalie told me what to pay attention to.

She also told me the truth in a way only the two of us could understand. A life spent with someone raping and torturing your soul is not a life. She knew, because her fiance, Royce King had been sleeping with my husband for two years. He never hurt her until he met Jake, but the abuse bloomed in indigo bruises on her skin so quickly, she spent all her time and money searching for an answer.

When she found it, she came straight to me. And I denied it. I denied the woman broken as much as myself. But I couldn't deny her for long.

I called her at two the morning of the … incident. I told her she was right and I was taking my kids and leaving. She came over that morning, gifting me a gun to take along when I escaped, and how could I refuse her that sense of protecting me after countering her pain those months? And maybe she was protecting, maybe she wasn't, but Rosalie provided all the pieces for the perfect crime.

And she called Jacob. She listened to what should've been my final call to her, and whispered in the ear he would feel pierced by a bullet only hours later. She brought him there, knowing I would do it. She reminded me of how cold it was that snowy day, and tugged the cashmere gloves over my fingers and onto my hands. There'd be none of my fingerprints on the gun; no gunshot residue on my palms.

He showed up screaming and yelling, ready to throw punches, but I was prepared for it.

Jake told me over and over I couldn't do it—wouldn't do it. I made him kneel on the hardwood, hoping his knees would hurt as much as mine did when he raped me in the same spot and created Walker. He told me again as he sank to his knees, that I didn't have the guts to do it. He looked me in the eye and I almost lost my nerve. But then he grinned at me. The bastard dared lift his lips and taunt. Me. The woman with the gun in her hand. It was the last thing he'd ever say in this life.

And then I did it.

Rosalie cleaned it up and staged the scene perfectly. She even had the fall guy ready. At his apartment, she held the gun in Royce's mouth, wrapped his fingers around it, and helped him squeeze the trigger as he cried for mercy. The woman was a danger by profession; a walking, talking, tornado of change in my life who swept over my world.

I wouldn't have shot Jake … except that's all I wanted to do. I wouldn't have framed Royce … except it was perfect, and his _suicide_ fit the crime so well. I wouldn't have lied … except now I'm free to live a life with Edward and my kids and none of this needs be another thought in my mind.

Except it is.

The only thing I learned from Jake's version of love was how to destroy. I learned that pain and guilt are powerful instigators and terrifying enemies. I learned that a woman scorned could be the most deadly of allies.

I look at Edward, with tears in his eyes and his jaw set as words of my painful marriage are spoken, and I know he's happy I'm free. My girls are happy. I am happy. Though I'll never fully be safe.

Each of us will face a moment of reckoning. Now I have to make amends for all the lost time … and make sure to never open my mouth about the truth, because two of us in this world know too much. And two is one too many.

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A/N: Thank you so, so, so fucking much for reading Heroin Chic. It has been an amazing journey.

The guessing and questions have been such a pleasure to read. I haven't had this much fun in so long.

I have an "alternate ending" to post as well.

And there may be a Rosalie spinoff coming, as well as many more stories.

Join the Cult on Facebook. QuinnLark (fan)Fiction Cult group.

From the bottom of my bitchy, black heart, thank you.

Madi.


	26. Spinoff teaser (not alternate ending)

A teaser for the spinoff.

Just because.

**Rawr Rawr, Motherfucker**

Just because

Rosalie

I stood under the steaming hot shower, washing the hair I hadn't cleaned in weeks; washing off the look of death and drugs. It was all I needed to make this perfect.

Bella did her part, I did mine, and it was over.

Royce won't touch me again.

I loved that prick. Loved him so much it hurt. Physically. I could've taken it if it was emotional. I spent ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency, and I knew how to handle the words people said; I could handle their fists and anger and rage. But when the man I loved and adored first raised his fist to me, I froze.

I'd been home from Afghanistan for twelve hours. Home from war and water-boarding the fucking Taliban, and my fiancé raped me. Raped. Me. I could've killed him. I could've taken him down then and there, but the shock to my system was enough to immobilize me.

I spent the next two years investigating, discovering, and plotting. I became the part I needed to play. Revenge is a plate best served cold.

But there was nothing cold about his hot blood on the floor.

There was nothing cold about Jake Black's life leaving his body. Bella shouldn't have touched him after his body fell to the floor. She got blood all over herself, and made my job a hell of a lot harder. Nothing cold about burning thousands of dollars worth of clothes because the stupid bitch had to check her handy work.

She was easy enough. A tortured soul in need of escape.

And now she's doing a fucking Katie Couric interview. Like ten years is enough time to wait. I understand she wants to be free of the memories of him, but. What the fuck. What the royal fuck is she thinking. If my name comes into this, she's toast.

XxxxxxX

A/N:

Alternate ending (it's humor and for my lovely Gee) coming soon.


	27. Outtake: Nanny Gee Saves the Day

A/N: make sure to read the sequel/spinoff, Code Name: Tantrum - now up!

This is all for fun.

xxxxxxx

Heroin Chic Outtake: alternate ending (humor, sex, etc..)

Nanny Gee and Emmett (because I love her to the moon and back.)

"Emmett, oh yeah, harder. Fuck me harder," she screamed as his thick cock filled her up and took her down through all the motions and notions of wonder in the world. She'd discovered him when she went to work for the Cullens as a nanny for Reny, Lexie, Walker, and Masen. Emmett was all muscle and brains and completing SEAL training; everything perfect that she could want.

His fatigues were down around his ankles as he held her up against the plum-painted wall beside the washing machine. He'd just flown into town on a 48-hour leave, and she was the first place he stopped. He had to come in her before he could get on with his day.

There were very strict rules in Casa de Cullen. No strangers, and no Brussels sprouts. Gee was perfect at following orders, which first drew Emmett to her.

She didn't know much about Mrs. Cullen, but what she did know was that the woman had a terrible ex-husband she ran away from, leaving him behind in New York City, and the kids were never allowed to see him. She googled the man to see who and what he was. Politicians are always pains in the ass.

Emmett laid her back on the washing machine, the cool metal heightening every other sensation, and hammered his way home.

"Tell me where my kids are!" an angry voice and the sound of a gun hammer cocking stopped Emmett mid-thrust. It was him. Jacob Motherfucking Black. "Get your dick out of her, and tell me where my kids are, shithead."

There was no way she'd stand by and let him walk away with those precious kids.

Gee met Emmett's eyes for the briefest of moments, but it was enough to come to a consensus. In a flash, Emmett was out of her with his hand around the man's throat, the life choking its way out of him each strangled gasp at a time and with ever crack of bone and tissue.

With what little life he had left, Jacob began to raise the gun toward Emmett. But there in Emmett's belt was his Glock. Gee grabbed it, aimed, and squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.

Black fell to the floor in a pool of dark and rusty blood.

Emmett was still for several moments, the only sound their labored breaths. When he spun, he took her again with ease. It was the hottest thing he's ever seen, and it was all her. All his Gee.

xxxxxxxx

A/N:

A little humor and a fun alternate ending, written at the request of my best bitch.

Make sure to read the sequel/spinoff, Code Name: Tantrum - now up!


	28. Explosive Chic

Explosive Chic

She's too close; not retreating.

I'm scared to death of her, and this must be the end I've been dreading—the one making up my nightmares and lodged in my throat.

But…she's with…Emmett? Why are they getting closer? Why are they on my land and in my space?

I pull the trigger before I think, before I allow myself a moment for my brain to tell my fingers to stop.

And there's suddenly a hell of a lot of blood, and my mind is fading to black because I don't know what the fuck I did that for, and there's two frantic men trying to make this right.

xxxxxxx

A/N: Needed to add this mini-update here. Make sure to read Code Name: Tantrum, the sister story of Heroin Chic.

PS. Since there's an obvious lack of basic human decency in this fandom, I'll add the message here as well: If you're reading something for free, don't be a motherfucking asshole. And further, don't be more of a chickenshit twat by not signing in and owning your fuckery.


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